


Princes Of The Solar System.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Category: Highlander (TV), The Martian - Andy Weir
Genre: 5 Things, Alternate Universe - Highlander Immortals, Alternate Universe - Immortals Are Known, Crossover, Fusion, Immortal Mark Watney, Immortals, Post-Canon, The Requisite Highlander Crossover, Yay WIP finishing!, blame #yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 18:40:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6716560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark Watney dies on Mars. Twice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Princes Of The Solar System.

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Принцы Солнечной Системы](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11289804) by [memoryinteacup](https://archiveofourown.org/users/memoryinteacup/pseuds/memoryinteacup)



> A long, long time ago, I told #yuletide that I'd typo'd NASA having declared Mark to be death. And then chat made me write the crossover. :P (Methos does not actually appear, I'm shocked, too.)

1.

NASA didn't want to tell me. It might upset me, they said. It might make me doubt my elite survival skills. I might lose morale. The Earth could get sucked into a vacuum. Because, you know, these are all things with equal likelihoods of happening.

So I feel like I should reintroduce myself.

Hello. My name is Mark Watney. I am an astronaut. I died on Sol 6.

 

2.

There's something freeing about all this, I have decided. I spent a really fuck-all amount of time worried I was going to die on Mars. I spent dark nights wondering about the future astronauts who would find my body. I put together different messages, trying to find the right words to say: I was alive. I came of my own free will. And I died for a higher cause.

But I wouldn't have died for that higher cause. I would have just hibernated, or frozen over, or whatever it is that happens to Immortals when their bodies can't heal anymore, but they aren't _dead_. You know those ancient Immortals they're finding in melting ice? Just like that. NASA could have sent Ares 5 to pick me up, or they could have waited until there was a functioning Martian colony. It wouldn't have made any difference.

No matter what, I would have survived Mars. Unless some part of the Hab blew off in a way that severed my spinal cord, _I was never going to die on Mars_. I would have survived to make it back to Earth.

And possibly die there.

 

3.

They get me an Immortality Counselor named Robert de Valicourt. I am not allowed to call him Bob. Or Robby. Or RVD The Great.

Nobody lets me have any fun on this planet.

Anyway, they tell me he used to be a sailor, so he understands something about long voyages (dude, I went to Mars, you sailed around in a wooden boat, it's not the same thing, okay?), and he's also the only Immortal who read my correspondence with NASA and still volunteered to tutor me. So I guess at least he knows what he's getting into.

I'm not a fan at first, but he grows on me. He has a certain sense of humor that I appreciate. He's also like six hundred years old, so some things don't really translate. His wife is cool, though. The first time one of them slices me open with a sword, Gina tells me all about the guillotines. It's pretty cool and also terrifying, but it's bonding, you know? We talk about our near-death experiences. I feel I am growing as a person. Immortal. Whatever.

(For my three-month anniversary at home, Robert mentions he used to be a pirate. It is _awesome_.)

 

4.

They've also given me a mundane therapist to work through my feelings of abandonment and grief and to process the knowledge that I _died_. They know I died on Sol 6, and they think I also died when the airlock decided to get an explosive divorce from the Hab. NASA also tried to have me track down every time I lost consciousness for any period of time; that could have been another time I died.

But that's not something I'm really interested in re-living, and anyway, there's no bingo to hit, no contest to collect them all. NASA just wants to be complete. There's research papers in this, you know. I'm the first person to become an Immortal in outer space. It's a piece of history. It's a curiosity. It also just happens to be my life, and that's weird.

So I talk to Robert about Immortal stuff, and I talk to Dr. Chang about everything else, and if sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, heart pounding because _they left me behind_ , because everyone thought I was actually dead, because it was an emergency situation and they couldn't find me, they couldn't check, everything was going hell in a handbasket too quickly to do anything, that it was the worst case scenario to destroy all other worst case scenarios, they left me behind they left me behind they left me behind--

They left me behind.

They stranded me on Mars, and they didn't have to, but that was a risk too great, but they stranded me, and I'm allowed to take this personally, I'm allowed to be upset, I'm allowed to process my anger and grief in constructive manners, I'm allowed to let it get to me-- and then I have to pick myself up and keep going, because I did make it home alive, because they did rescue me, because I-- because I died on Sol 6, because they were right, because I _was dead_ , but then I wasn't any more, and I've survived Mars, and I'm here, and I'm alive and I'm not going to die until my head gets cut off, and I died on Mars and I didn't die on Mars, and here I am, I have survived.

And they rushed. They rushed to rescue me, because they _thought_ , but they weren't _sure_ , and if they had been wrong, if I hadn't become Immortal, it would have been monstrous, and even if I had, a young Immortal, abandoned, left to freeze over on a hostile alien planet... they took the risk, they had to take the risk.

They left me behind, so they had to rescue me. That was the bargain they made with themselves.

And as for me, all I had to do was stay alive until they could come. But -- if they'd been wrong. If they'd been wrong, I would have already been dead. If they'd been wrong, I never would have made it. If they'd been wrong -- but they weren't. They weren't wrong, and I'm here, and I'm alive, _and they left me there_ , but they came back, they came back, they came back.

 

5.

Slowly, they introduce me to other Immortals. Houston, we have a gathering. In all, it's a bit weird. Martinez comes with me for moral support, since he's got an uncle or something somewhere who's an Immortal. It's weird. It's all -- this is all really weird. This never came up in the pre-mission tests. This never came up at all. No one told me, hey, Mark, you might become an Immortal some day.

But they don't go around telling people that, right? Because it doesn't always happen, because they're not always right -- and anyway, I don't know if it would have helped me on Mars. I don't know what I would have done differently had I known. Maybe... but I've got a lot of maybes.

Anyway, it's fine. Weird, but fine. Robert introduces me to some of his friends, who also used to be pirates. I sign a couple autographs, get a few for myself. Phyllis Zachary is there; she became an Immortal while doing tests for the early Apollo missions, which is pretty cool. Back then, they had to hush it up. Now they're talking about sending an Immortal up on Ares 6. They're talking about recruiting specifically for it. They want me to help train the recruits.

Because apparently I know something about being an Immortal on Mars?

I swear, they could hear me laughing hysterically all the way from Neptune.

(And, hey, in a couple hundred years, maybe I'll be around to know for sure.)


End file.
